PROPOSED RELEASE OF THE NIXON SPECIAL FILES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP89G00643R001100020005-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 23, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 14, 2011
• Sequence Number: 5
• Publication Date: March 17, 1987
• Content Type: MEMO

MEMORANDUM FOR: OGC
EXA DDA
AC IMS/DO
IRO/DI
C/SRD/OS
1. In a letter dated 19 February 1987 the Counsel to the President
advised the CIA General Counsel that the Archivist of the U.S. planned to
release to the public 1.5 million pages of former President Nixon's papers
called the "Special Files." The release date is set for 4 May 1987. The
"Special Files" are a collection of those records of the Nixon Administration
that related to "Watergate" and were collected in part to document any "abuse
of power" allegedly engaged in by members of the Nixon Administration. They
were collected by Ms. Trudy Frye, a member of Nixon's staff, initially for the
purpose of providing tighter security for the Administration's records as it
became clear that it was entering a threatening period. Later, the Special
Prosecute ordered the collection of all records that could reflect on "abuse
of power." These records will be of intense interest to the public. It also
is possible that former President Nixon will initiate legal action to prevent
release of the records at this time.
2. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has custody of
the records and they have had from 40 to the present group of 23 persons
processing and reviewing the records. They have described their review of the
"Special Files" as having been done "very carefully." This included
withdrawing all classified information whether marked or not, law enforcement
investigatory material, trade secrets, and material the disclosure of which
would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of privacy. The withdrawn
material is held separately and will not be released with the balance of the
collection. NARA personnel inserted withdrawal notices in place of the
documents removed so the public will be able to request them under the
Executive Order Mandatory Review provision or FOIA. There are about 350
archives boxes of this withdrawn material. A spot check of about 20 boxes
reflected that roughly 50 percent was withheld on national security grounds.
Of this material about 75 percent was marked classified and 25 percent was
 unmarked but the NARA reviewers believed it was classified. This percentage
of "possible" classified and a survey of the substance of the material
withheld supports the NARA contention that their review was done in a very
careful manner.
3. On 10 March 1987 Peter Keisler, Assistant Counsel in the Office of
the Legal Counsel to the President, called a meeting at the EOB to establish
procedures for classified government agencies to make a final review of the
"Special Files" before they are released to the public. The meeting was
attended by representatives of State, Defense, Justice, FBI, Treasury, Office
of the U.S. Trade Representative, and CIA. Keisler, and Mark Miller of
Justice, had already divided the "Special Files' on the basis of the
descriptions given in the Finding Aids that were prepared by NARA personnel.
The Finding Aids themselves are 4 1/2 inches thick. CIA, for example, was
made responsible to review: The personal files of John D. Erlichman, Richard
C. Tufaro, and David R. Young (the latter two were involved in developing
directives dealing with information security and with counter-terrorism);
boxes numbered 1-119 of the President's Personal Files; and boxes numbered
51-59 of the White House Central Files.
4. C/CRD and three experienced CRD reviewers began the review on 11
March 1987. They completed review of the assigned material by COB 16 March
1987. We reviewed all or part of 70 archives boxes. We identified 12 items
that we believe were classified. The specific types of information that was
 5. NARA personnel stated that they would excise the classified
information before they released these documents, i.e. they would sanitize
these specific documents. They also provided us with copies of these items to
show Agency management the nature of the problem (NOTE: NARA provided the
copies on condition that, 1) they would be shown only within the CIA and on a
need to know basis; 2) we would not reproduce them; and 3) that we would
return them to NARA for destruction. The reason for this tight control is to
prevent legal complications in handling the Nixon papers.)
6. The question now is what about the material being reviewed by the
other agencies. Since the review is conducted in one large room we have been
able to alert the representatives of the other agencies to our problems as
they came to our attention and they have done likewise. In this way we have
exchanged items with State, DoD, and the FBI. Since we still have over two
weeks available to review this material we plan to focus our continued efforts
by using the Finding Aids and by discussing this with the representatives of
the other agencies. This process will begin on 17 March when we all meet
again with Peter Keisler in the EOB.
7. Any addressee comments or suggestions would be welcome. The single
copy of the identified documents will be brought to each addressee in turn as
time permits. we will report future developments as they occur.
 Distribution:
Orginal - OGC
1 - EXA/DDA
STAT 1 - AC[:=IMS/DO
1 - IRO/DI
1 - C/SRD/OS
1 - CRD file Liaison/NARA
1 - CRD Chrono